Impact of Distributed Solar PV Systems Operation on Residential Feeders Performance

Simulations using PSCAD have been performed to evaluate the impact of distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on the performance of suburban feeders. Multiple scenarios including low, medium and high feeder loading as well as different PV generation levels and micro-inverters reactive power supports have been analyzed and compared to the baseline case referred to as no PV. Results showed at high PV generation feeder losses increases when load is below a medium level. They also consistently showed that the feeder performance, in particular the power factor at the feeder head, is deteriorated when no reactive power support is provided by the PV micro-inverters. Adjusting the micro-inverters power factor based on the generation level significantly improves the feeder performance. Alternately a fixed micro-inverter power factor of 0.9 will provided better performance relatively to the baseline.